1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a textile-type interface device for optical communication in a wearable computing system and, more particularly, to a textile-type interface device that performs communication by using light in a wearable computing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
With development of the computing technology, research activities for providing various types of personalized computing environments are in progress and in particular, wearable computing that researches a clothing-type wearable computer has been considered as a core field of the next-generation computing technology. As communication devices with various apparatuses that are distributed inside and outside of a system such as a clothing are required in the wearable computing field, research fields such as personal area network (PAN) and fabric area network (FAN) have been developed and various methods have been attempted.
The basic methods can be largely divided into a classic scheme in which a connection part in the clothing is configured as a removable socket type to connect external apparatuses and a wireless scheme using electromagnetic waves. In the removable socket scheme as the most commonly used scheme, a user needs to connect a socket installed in the clothing to the mobile apparatus manually, such that the user cannot easily attach and detach the mobile apparatus to and from the socket and should be watchful of waterproofing processing for a socket connector of the clothing. Since the wireless scheme using the electromagnetic waves designs a textile-type inductive antenna and implements the antenna in a clothing form uses the existing low-power near communication scheme such as radio frequency (RF), Zigbee, or Bluetooth or an electromagnetic inductive coupling scheme, the wireless scheme provides convenience in attaching and detaching the external apparatus, but it is defective in preventing the electromagnetic waves from affecting the human body and providing proper security.